[A version of this review was published in 2016]
Ugh, I wish I could backtrack the 90 minutes of my life wasted watching this movie.
Adrien Brody stars as a psychiatrist dealing with the trauma of his daughter’s death. This trauma has in turn caused him to begin to hallucinate about a terrible event that took place during his childhood.
This movie is a collection of horror cliches wrapped in the over-saturated visual style of soap adverts and grunge music videos.
It’s not scary, it’s not suspenseful, and it is not compelling in any way.
Brody does his best (with a whiffy Aussie accent), Sam Neill pops his head in for a few scenes, and Robin Mcleavy of Loved Ones fame does a good job in a thankless role as a cop dragged into Brody’s troubles.
Although the filmmakers do their best to make everything look good (the photography is very sumptuous), their efforts at atmosphere amount the usual ‘strobe light and loud bangs’ approach of bad horror movies.
Ultimately, the script is the root of the problems here. The protagonist’s story is hard to get involved with, and his predicament is never that scary.
While never actively terrible, Backtrack is aggressively un-involving.
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